Crime Magazine is about true crime: organized crime, celebrity crime, serial killers, corruption, sex crimes, capital punishment, prisons, assassinations, justice issues, crime books, crime films and crime studies.
Ron Chepesiuk, a Rock Hill, S.C., freelance journalist, has been reporting on international drug trafficking since 1987. He is the author of Hard Target; The U.S.'s War on International Drug Trafficking, 1992-1997 (McFarland, 1998) and The War on Drugs: An International Encyclopedia, ABC--CLIO, 1999), which contains a forward by former Colombian President (1998-2002), Andres Pastrana Arango. He is the author of 16 other books and more than 2,700 articles that have appeared in such publications as USA Today, The National Review, New York Times Syndicate and Woman's World. In 2003, Chepesiuk was a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at Chittagong University in Chittagong, Bangladesh.
Ron Chepesiuk
Strange Encounters of a Cadaver Kind
June, 15, 2010 Special to Crime Magazine
An excerpt from Ron Chepesiuk’s new book, Sergeant Smack, The Legendary Lives and Times of Ike Atkinson., Kingpin, and his Band of Brothers. (www.ikeatkinsonkingpin.com)
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Scarface in Paradise
Nov. 30, 2009 Special to Crime Magazine
(This excerpt is from Ron Chepesiuk’s new book, Gangsters of Miami, True Tales of Mobsters, Gamblers, Hitmen, Con Men and Gang Bangers from the Magic City, which Barricade Books (Barricadebook.com) published in November 2009. All rights reserved.)
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The Chicago Outfit Makes Its Move
September 7, 2007
Editor's Note: "Policy" is a form of lottery in which a ticket is purchased and numbers selected, with the winning numbers announced at a drawing. No one knows for sure how the policy game began, but the Sixteenth century European countries were using the lottery to raise money for the state. In the United States, Virginia first introduced a lottery game in the Seventeenth century, and it spread across the country during the next century.
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Black Caesar
February 20, 2007
In May of 1969, detective Joe Kowalski, a seven-year veteran with the New York Police Department, was living at 130 Clarkson Avenue in a quiet, low-to-middle income neighborhood in Brooklyn. One day, the apartment building's parking lot began to look like a luxury car sales lot, as people began streaming into the building at all hours of the day to see a new resident who had moved into a three-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor. "I didn't like him the first time I saw him," Kowalski recalled in reference to his new neighbor. "He was loud and flashy, drove fancy cars and had no visible means of support. His friends would block the driveway with their cars and park in other people's parking spaces. Some of them carried paper bags that looked as if they might contain money. As a cop, I knew I needed to pay attention to them."
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The Raid in Teaneck
October 14, 2007
by Ron Chepesiuk and Anthony Gonzalez
Prologue
The law enforcement raid came on a crisp, cold night in late January, 1975, without a high profile. No involved planning. No SWAT team. No large show of force. No TV cameras. There was plenty of man power, though: a task force consisting of 10 agents from Group 22 of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB).
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The Investigation Begins
June 20, 2007
No one had ever seen 44 pounds of cocaine in New York City before.
– Ken Robinson, DEA agent
In the summer of 1978, the DEA's New York City branch office received a letter from a citizen's committee representing the Jackson Heights neighborhood in the borough of Queens. "I'm concerned about the violence in our district and the crime wave the cocaine traffic is causing," the letter read. "The DEA is the government agency responsible for investigating drugs. You need to do something about it."
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The Fall of the Cali Cartel
October 21, 2006
U.S. justice was finally served on Sept. 26, 2006 in a Miami court when the godfathers of the Cali Cartel, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, and his brother Miguel, pled guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The plea, which came after months of intense negotiations with several U.S. agencies, marked the end of the largest running and most important investigation in U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency history.
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The Labs That Made It Snow
June 15, 2003
Prologue:
"It's similar to, maybe, baking a cake."
— David Karasiewski, Forensic Chemist, DEA
The call that launched the biggest drug trafficking investigation in New York State Police (NYSP) history came on April 12, 1985. Bob Sears, a DEA agent in the Albany office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), groped for the switch on the bed lamp and squinted at the alarm clock on the end table. It was a little past 2 a.m. Sears fumbled with the phone and blurted: "This better be important."
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